well, i'm not a psychologist or nothing, but how about not starting with the concept that they are too stupid and/or lacking in empathy to get what you are talking about anyway, no matter how long you beat them over the head with it?

If I thought people couldn't get it, why would I bother? That would be kind of pointless. I've made my stance on calling people stupid clear by now I hope (as in I don't do it), and people with neurologically non/low-functioning empathy itself are supposedly pretty rare.

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especially because, for all you know, you are entirely wrong about that last part (tell me how a man who gets slipped a roofie and ass-raped at a party won't understand how people could fear for their safety at one).

If you want to say there are some exceptions, especially for specific things like this, then sure. However, as a general rule men are not nearly as at a risk as women are, and being socially prompted to put yourself in situations where risk is tangible because you have been told to watch out for it or it is your fault if a bad thing happens to you is something that men in general do not face from being men.

As a larger rule, men will not face the entire social stigma of being a woman that happens day to day, so even your hypothetical man still only gets a fraction of it through that personal experience route, at best. That was just one hypothetical example to give Dogen something to work with.

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if you start out by telling people you are trying to 'convert' that they will never actually be able to do it, why should they waste their time listening to you?

Because they can do better? I stuck the word "fully" in there for a reason.

well, i'm not a psychologist or nothing, but how about not starting with the concept that they are too stupid and/or lacking in empathy to get what you are talking about anyway, no matter how long you beat them over the head with it?

If I thought people couldn't get it, why would I bother? That would be kind of pointless.

if you think people can get it, why do you add

Kylra wrote:

you never will be able to do so fully

because the 'fully' doesn't make a damn bit of difference to the listener. you are telling people right up front that they will never get it. so, again, why should they bother to listen to you? when you start out by immediately disparaging their ability to learn?

and speaking of immediately treating people like idiots, i am very well aware that men are not nearly as at risk as women, you didn't need to waste half a post informing me of that fact - unless, of course, you wanted to make the point that i was too stupid to actually know anything about how women are treated in the world. my point in setting the example was that you (as you demonstrated in your rejoinder) are apparently unwilling to accept that any man can also understand these things. so i gave you an example of a man that might. and you proceeded to demonstrate that you are, in fact, utterly incapable of recognizing that men (among others) might in fact be perfectly capable of understanding what you are talking about.

now i'll sit back and see how you manage to utterly "misinterpret" this, so you can keep on ranting on how we all don't understand you._________________aka: neverscared!

no, actually, i won't. i'm going to go reread "the hunting of the snark". it makes a whole lot more sense than anything you've posted, and lewis carroll is at least up-front in telling you he's going to make the words mean whatever he wants, no matter how anyone else uses them._________________aka: neverscared!

because the 'fully' doesn't make a damn bit of difference to the listener. you are telling people right up front that they will never get it. so, again, why should they bother to listen to you? when you start out by immediately disparaging their ability to learn?

That's a thing to learn. I mean, I guess I could just take it easy on men and assume they can't learn that, but I think a bit more highly of men than to hold hard truths from them because I think none of them will be able to understand at all.

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and speaking of immediately treating people like idiots, i am very well aware that men are not nearly as at risk as women, you didn't need to waste half a post informing me of that fact - unless, of course, you wanted to make the point that i was too stupid to actually know anything about how women are treated in the world.

Not at all, but you asked the question.

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my point in setting the example was that you (as you demonstrated in your rejoinder) are apparently unwilling to accept that any man can also understand these things. so i gave you an example of a man that might. and you proceeded to demonstrate that you are, in fact, utterly incapable of recognizing that men (among others) might in fact be perfectly capable of understanding what you are talking about.

There's a difference between rote knowing statistics plus a general detached statement of "this kind of thing hurts" and actually knowing what the experience of being a woman is like and how that personally affects your decisions, emotions, pain and so on. Sure there will be some exceptions (such as trans men in particular), especially for sections of it, but in general? No.

Ok...yknow, women will never know what it feels like to get kicked in the balls hard enough to have one of them rupture..but that doesn't stop them from having empathy toward it and realizing that it's not the sort of thing one classifies as "good".

Edit: I don't have to know exactly how it feels to be a woman...i just have to be willing to take women's word for it.

There's a difference between sympathy and empathy and it seems like a clarification here might help. Usually it's not all that important, but the difference is pretty critical to this specific topic.

Sympathy is roughly when you intellectually recognize someone is in pain or some other feeling and you have whatever feelings you have about that person as an outside observer.
Empathy is roughly when you feel along with the person what they are feeling as if you were in their position, as a platonic ideal.

Physical pain is pretty one dimensional, something everyone experiences and in the case you present is temporary. It's pretty easy for most people to both sympathize and empathize with that. The other stuff related to ball-rupturing maybe not so much on the empathy though. That's still pretty simple however and you can probably get some good results quickly regarding whatever the effects of a single ruptured testicle is.

The systemic oppression of women is very complicated, just about everywhere you go and will last women's entire lives. It might be easy for you to sympathize, but not so much to empathize over the things that generally affect women only to the degree that women are affected. With effort, conveying experiences and analogy a lot can be done though.

To contrast even more to your physical pain example, someone that is deaf is going to still probably really easy for you to sympathize with, but very difficult to really empathize with unless you also have a full sensory disability of some sort. If you have some other disability, you might be able to empathize well with some of it in how society treats disabled people generally, but still fall short on things not relevant to your own disability, except maybe thinking through it analogically but even the effectiveness of that is probably questionable depending.

especially because, for all you know, you are entirely wrong about that last part (tell me how a man who gets slipped a roofie and ass-raped at a party won't understand how people could fear for their safety at one).

If you want to say there are some exceptions, especially for specific things like this, then sure. However, as a general rule men are not nearly as at a risk as women are, and being socially prompted to put yourself in situations where risk is tangible because you have been told to watch out for it or it is your fault if a bad thing happens to you is something that men in general do not face from being men.

As a larger rule, men will not face the entire social stigma of being a woman that happens day to day, so even your hypothetical man still only gets a fraction of it through that personal experience route, at best. That was just one hypothetical example to give Dogen something to work with.

You really need to be careful about how often you use statements like this. As Mouse pointed out, you jump to spending a LOT of your post on explaining it. Every time I read statements like this, when the previous post did indeed have a point, it's like the complete inverse of the "Somewhere someone is talking about women's issues instead of men's issues" or "Guys have problems too" annoyingly bad arguments we keep seeing. It's not that you CAN'T say women have it worse, but when your response to a point in an argument is to simply try and negate it with "Women have it worse", you're sounding no better than the misogynistic guys that jump in randomly in feminism discussions.

And it's not just in this instance. I think I've noted a few times you fell back on this logic. At the time I just thought of it as a form of you yourself being sexist, but I wasn't able to quite pin it down in such a way as right this moment. You tend to often just disregard men as unable to fully understand or at least "unlikely".

Kylra wrote:

Sympathy is roughly when you intellectually recognize someone is in pain or some other feeling and you have whatever feelings you have about that person as an outside observer.
Empathy is roughly when you feel along with the person what they are feeling as if you were in their position, as a platonic ideal.

Should be noted that often sympathy is considered a sensation you get when you feel for someone's misfortune, personally knowing what they're going through due to similar situations that have occurred to you. In that thought, empathy is more related to being able to understand someone's pain without having to go through the same thing to understand it. In this, a lot of people lack true empathy. You see that when people let their bias negate the fact that another person could have a problem, when they themselves have never had the problem. (IE all the random misogynists that pop up on here trying to tell us that sexism really isn't as bad as we think.)_________________

You really need to be careful about how often you use statements like this. As Mouse pointed out, you jump to spending a LOT of your post on explaining it. Every time I read statements like this, when the previous post did indeed have a point, it's like the complete inverse of the "Somewhere someone is talking about women's issues instead of men's issues" or "Guys have problems too" annoyingly bad arguments we keep seeing. It's not that you CAN'T say women have it worse, but when your response to a point in an argument is to simply try and negate it with "Women have it worse", you're sounding no better than the misogynistic guys that jump in randomly in feminism discussions.

I'm not negating it when I do stuff like that, I am pointing out root causes. Misogyny is at the root of most mens' problems regarding gender. Fixing misogyny will fix most if not all men's problems. Fixing "misandry" in a direct sense will be relatively fruitless. unless you define "misandry" as "women won't do what men want" like so many of the dudeposters you mention are wont to do.

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And it's not just in this instance. I think I've noted a few times you fell back on this logic. At the time I just thought of it as a form of you yourself being sexist, but I wasn't able to quite pin it down in such a way as right this moment. You tend to often just disregard men as unable to fully understand or at least "unlikely".

If I were dismissing men because they couldn't fully understand and thus there's no point, then why am I wall of texting with Dogen so much? Or posting so many words to you and Monkey? That seems like the direct opposite of dismissing/disregarding men.

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Should be noted that often sympathy is considered a sensation you get when you feel for someone's misfortune, personally knowing what they're going through due to similar situations that have occurred to you. In that thought, empathy is more related to being able to understand someone's pain without having to go through the same thing to understand it. In this, a lot of people lack true empathy. You see that when people let their bias negate the fact that another person could have a problem, when they themselves have never had the problem. (IE all the random misogynists that pop up on here trying to tell us that sexism really isn't as bad as we think.)

Maybe in common parlance this would be acceptable, but for this technical of a discussion, we have to go with more technical meanings. Empathy covers both of the things you mention here (assuming "understand someone's pain" means "feels someone's pain", if not, see sympathy below). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

Remember back when you said you pitied me because of what I must have gone through to say what I am saying? That is a statement of sympathy because you are expressing your pity over what you suppose is my pain (which supposed pain perhaps you may have felt some empathy for and felt the pain yourself).

1. Yes, you are negating it. You are insulting us by assuming you have to explain it to us, and you are dismissing our real point by ignoring it and ranting on about your particular issue. Adyon has you pegged - you are one of the worst sexists here. Even if you don't outright insult people, you clearly have a very low opinion of men.

2. You are absolutely dismissing men when you say things like "you will never fully understand". You are making an enemy right at the start, instead of trying to make an ally. You (as usual) completely missed - or, more likely, willfully ignored - the point I was making. IF YOU WANT TO WIN PEOPLE OVER, YOU DON'T START BY DELIBERATELY INSULTING THEM. And please, PLEASE, do not sacrifice more innocent electrons in trying to convince me that Your Way Is Right. You've demonstrated repeatedly, right here, that it isn't.

As to why you do it - I've come to the conclusion that you like this image of yourself as the lone warrior, battling sexism even though everyone around you is an enemy, and no one, not even the ones you are trying to save, truly understands what you are fighting for. You get to be a martyr in your own mind, without ever actually having to be martyred. Deep down (subconsciously, if you like) you really don't care about changing sexist attitudes. Because if you did - no more fearless warrior!

you just fight because you like to fight. you like having enemies._________________aka: neverscared!

Then on page 25 I said that I assumed you didn't have licensure, and in your next response you said you hadn't had formal education. Me mentioning my own education didn't come about until page 32!. How time flies.

You've mentioned your education in another thread (I happened to see it before starting discussion in this thread too), and other people have even indirectly mentioned your knowledge in this area, so it is relevant even though it had not been stated by you in this discussion until page 32. You seemed better than this kind of a jab to try to eke out a minor technicality win if I didn't catch it so I'm kind of disappointed.

Your characterization of how I started this conversation seems pretty central to our disagreement, since you're calling it sexist. You can't call my behavior sexist, but then call me trying to get the facts about that behavior correct a "mere technicality." That you were aware of my education is irrelevant, because you depicted my initial posts (or posts) as both more aggressive and condescending than it really was, and implied that I attempted to hold my education over you from the beginning. I find this dishonest, and I think dishonesty is important to point out.

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You definitely did not act optimally if you are trying to not impede anti-sexism work. If you had just said "Yeah, I could have started this at a better time than in the middle of when you were yelling at Ashland and Lich Mong and I'll see about doing that at a better time or in a better way next time" everything would be grand and I wouldn't have to spend a bunch of words dealing with your logical inconsisitencies on the matter. People screw up, but the important thing is to learn and do better rather than get bogged down by exactly how bad the action was. You can't really do that if you don't think there's a problem though. Like in your attempts to catch yourself making a fundamental attribution error, you wouldn't be able to do that if you didn't think it was a problem.

You had to fortell the future that you are right in your argument with me in order to make the claim that your action there was justified by that. Or even if you are right, that I would be swayed. It's lucky for you that something is coming out of this though, even if I am not swayed, isn't it?

You can still "make what I do better" without disrupting me when I am in the middle of doing what I am. You could still have a higher net anti-sexism outcome if you had waited for at least a less disruptive time. Thus by utility you would have to wait, yes? You did not quite address why this isn't the case. You likely would have the same intent either way as well, so any net change from intent is not there. If anything your intent may have been an even more positive intent from waiting so it would be further net anti-sexist to wait when factoring in intent.

No, I didn't have to foretell the future to know I was right. I knew I was right walking into this conversation, because I knew much of the evidence already. That's the difference between knowing something and believing you're right before ever looking into it.

Anyway, it's rational to address behavior when you see it - it's how teachers and coaches train students, how friends correct annoying behavior in friends, how parents teach kids, and even how owners train dogs. Timing is important for pinpointing which behavior should change, and waiting can mean losing focus (or not remembering the behavior in question). However, the educational imperative is thus in conflict with the anti-sexism imperative (the best teaching moment, in this case, is not the best feminism moment). I'll keep it in mind, but we should also recognize that there will often be competing motivations, and two good things may compete against one another for time. You have to pick which one is better serviced by acting or not acting, and in this case I decided that acting was of better service than not acting.

In addition, the conversation about sexism seemed (and still seems) to have a great many people on your side fighting the good fight. Thus, while you may think you're the best person to champion the cause, I had (and have) no reason to believe that, and thus had (and have) no reason to believe that distracting you will cause any appreciable difference in the outcome of these conversations. By contrast, when I brought up the issue of method, no one was discussing it (someone eventually would in another thread, though). That made it a more salient topic in that moment, to me.

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Who said I was trying to be "fully logical?" I'm simply trying to maintain logic, in addition to whatever else comes up. Being logical doesn't preclude me from having feelings. We even discussed this already, back on page 30, with regard to how I try to keep my barbs "less pointed and emotional" when I'm having an intellectual discussion, because insults and intellectualism don't mix.

Logical may have been the wrong word choice, but you're the one who is/was clamoring for ultimate empiricism in order to do whatever it is you were trying to do with that. Feelings about a correct path are not, strictly speaking anyway, empirical in the sense we're using "empirical".

I think I disagree with pretty much everything you've said here. What I was trying to do was show that your position has no evidentiary support - that it's just your opinion that it works, and that generally speaking both the science and other activists disagree with you. I've shown a considerable amount of evidence to support that 1) people don't like being insulted, and react by resisting whatever you want them to do, 2) making people angry makes them irrational, 4) making people angry changes the way they perceive the information your present, 5) it changes the way they remember the interaction, 6) limits the amount of information they can remember, and 7) can cause them to take even more extreme positions against you (that one I have to credit ktern for). That seems like pretty clear empirical evidence. Now, after trying several different tactics and having those shot down, you're talking about cognitive dissonance, but not showing you can control how it effects people (or, really, that you understand how it works); and priming, but have not shown that you understand how that works, either. So, it seems natural that you don't like the fact that I'm pushing for empirical evidence. You could never lose an argument if we abandoned the search for evidence, because then it would just be my opinion against yours. You have the unfortunate position here of being clearly wrong, and like you admonished me above, struggling to hold to your position rather than simply admitting it.

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I don't think I have complained about your tone (though I have complained about what I see as unrealistic expectations for what I must do for you unless you want to include that into "tone" for some reason). I even invited you to start insulting me if you wanted. I have also agreed that your stated intent is your intent, so I'm not sure what you think you're trying to do here. I don't even disagree with your willingness to examine your own behavior, just your capability to carry out that intent and willingness to efficiently and effectively examine it on your own.

No, you haven't complained about my tone. You've just misinterpreted it at your convenience. When we're talking "in the moment" (as it were, with walls of text) we seem to discussing rather cordially. When you describe my arguments later, though, you depict them as harsh and rude. Now, I may not be fit for tea time, but I'm not rude. So depicting me as such is a misinterpretation of my tone. Which is either concerning, if you actually think I'm intending to be rude when I'm not (I have no interest in insulting you, because it would be contrary to my goal of informing you), or dishonest, if you're "flavoring" my arguments to make them seem worse than they are.

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Intent does not actually change any consequences of an action. It might change how you judge a person, but an action? In your first example, was smashing the lamp a good thing?

No, smashing the lamp was an example of a bad thing (I thought that was obvious) the emotional impact of which was moderated by the intent of the person who broke it. When someone hurts you accidentally, an honest accident, such as breaking your lamp through thoughtlessness, it's less emotionally hurtful than if someone is, for instance, terrorizing you in your home and uses the lamp as an effigy of literally breaking you. Hence, intent is important, even if it doesn't resolve one of responsibility or ameliorate all suffering. End of point.

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Also, to analogize to what I am dealing with, what if someone stated that they will continue accidentally breaking lamps as it may happen because they don't care about breaking lamps, and that this happens at least once per day?

What about the same situation, except they don't realize they are breaking lamps every day, but can possibly be made to realize it even through them being emotionally hostile to and getting angry because of your accusations that they are breaking lamps because they are doing no such thing as far as they can tell?

If they don't care about breaking lamps, then their intent is one of indifference to the problems they cause for others. That's bad. If they don't realize they're breaking lamps then their intent may be good (that's actually a description of a lack of intent, so all I can say is that it's not obviously bad). But that's where your analogy falls apart. If they can't even tell they're breaking lamps (tiny microscopic lamps!), then you would approach them in a non-confrontational way, ask them to listen to you before they react, tell them that you understand their intent was not to harm (and possibly they had no way to know they were even doing harm), show them the evidence of the harm they've caused, and then reiterate that you believe their intent was good and that there are ways to express their good intent that harm no one. Minimizes emotional harm to the person receiving criticism, which helps maximize the positive connection between critic and recipient, and thus increases the likelihood of internalizing the criticism because it doesn't cause a conflict that must first be resolved. Textbook counseling for everything from marriage counseling to school counseling to management training to customer service. Layer the bad between layers of good (open positive and end positive) and it goes down easier.

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No, that's pretty much straight up utilitarianism. John Stuart Mills, in A System of Logic, wrote, "intention to produce the effect, is one thing; the effect produced in consequence of the intention, is another thing; the two together constitute the action." Of course, no one makes intention the entire basis of right and wrong - including me. You just made that up.

Actual Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on the actual consequences (as opposed to foreseen, foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences).

That's really needlessly semantical now that we're getting into what you believe rather than the label for it, so just see the question regarding whether continuing to break lamps on accident is "good" or "okay".

This seems like dissembling. You try to correct me and then call it "needlessly semantical" to forestall me from replying. If the semantic argument was "needless" then why did you need to correct me here?

In any event, there are many types of consequentialism, and utilitarianism is one, and many include questions of intent. Now you know!

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I can't believe I'm doing this, but...
Apple Dictionary:
hypocrisy

And that does not apply. Overcoming your bad actions is a critical part of the system of ethics I use for determining character, and you have not recognized the significance of that yet, instead trying to attack me on a straw reduction of my beliefs that is easier for you to dismiss. The main moral emphasis for judging character is not on the action itself per se, at least not when done out of ignorance, but in the action taken to stop that prior action in the future once pointed out. Supposedly you hold an at least similar view according to a statement of yours in a later segment. I've already explained about the qualia analogy, and as someone that uses utilitarian principles, you should easily recognize that kind of ethical calculation quandry as well. If you do not for whatever reason, I can elaborate some, but if you do push that as you're trying to, that makes EVERYONE at least a minimal hypocrite about most things, which I'm guessing is not your intent. If that's the sense you're trying to say that in though, then sure.

If you're just trying to make a semantics argument instead of an actual ethical argument, just say so and put it aside. If you think it's very important to try to use that word to stick me with a negative value judgement, then good job, you've already done it.

All of this seems dishonest. You have brought up - repeatedly - that you don't use and that you disapprove of language that disparages people by comparing them to children or the disabled. In what way is that a false paraphrasing of your beliefs? That you can rationalize contradicting your beliefs, as with the qualia analogy, doesn't make it any less a contradiction. I find it ironic that, after demonstrating a disconnect between what you say and how you act, that you're trying to turn this around and say I'm doing something wrong. For all your talk of how I should accept when I do something wrong, you don't seem to be following your own advice. You know what they call people who do that, right?

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What is intended to make people angry? Calling someone unperceptive about specific issues is not intended to make them angry neither is naive. It probably will, but it is not necessary, not ideal, and not what I'd rather have happen. I'd rather people just recognize what they are doing and stop that. That is my intent. Considering that I alone am privileged to any kind of direct knowledge of my intent, and behavior is not proof of my intent, you have a very steep hill to climb here if you're going to pin it as my primary intention to make people angry.

If you didn't intend to make people angry by calling them child-like, blind, and disgusting, then why did you spend the entire discussion arguing that their anger was your intent and was necessary to get through to them?

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You also previously said that the words "blind" and "child" were not really the issue, it was the entire concept of calling people unperceptive, etc:

Dogen wrote:

You're welcome, but you missed the point. The point was that, on the other end of those barbs, is a person who feels attacked. Calling people child-like is insulting. Calling them blind is also insulting. Finding a new way to refer to them as "naive and inexperienced" or "incapable of comprehending the depths of concepts" is no less insulting. You are using insults. That's pretty much the whole point (because it's the basis of my, "you would be more effective if you stopped insulting people" argument).

Your "incapable" there is an addition of your own though. If that is one of the common misinterpretations of things I have said and you think I mean a natural limitation that they cannot ever gain more understanding than they have now, then that is not the case.

If you're saying here that I can call people wrong, but not say why they end up wrong, then what do you expect me to do? Naivete and unperceptiveness with regards to sexism and morality being reinforced by emotional defenses are major factors in patriarchy/white supremacy/etc.

What I'm saying is that it's insulting when you belittle people, or when you disparage them. It's the specific intent you convey to people that implies that they are weak, incapable, or deplorable. These are judgments that are unnecessary when telling someone why they're wrong, and which only serve to frustrate and anger the people you're trying to get to understand you.

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Also, please point out where I have called anyone in this thread an idiot. I try not to use it as a pejorative, and last people have checked me that are looking for it, I was very successful at that.

The part you're referencing here wasn't intended to be a quote of you (which is why it wasn't in a quote box), but an example of how belittling and disparaging people makes them angry.

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I'm not sure how you would logically spite me considering that you'll have to spite both what I want and what I think of you/your actions. Both routes are equally valid logically and contradict each other.

I wouldn't classify what you're doing right now as spite. At least, it doesn't seem like it yet anyway. You're displaying some annoying ignorance of or avoidance of recogizing contextual differences, but hardly enough to qualify as "spite".

Spite can be anything, and to any degree, as long as the motivation is to hurt, annoy, or offend you. The point of this vein of conversation was that you seem to think you can implant subconscious suggestions that people will recall later, despite any impressions they have of you, or any notions that are recalled/primed in response to the way you treat them and the way they feel about you as a result. Then, these subconscious ideas you implant will work on them to get them to agree with you, even though your behavior is more likely to prime them to contrast themselves with the example that you're setting - that is, to actively try and distance themselves from you and feminism. Is that your position?

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I meant close as far as what is considered sexist, not emotionally.

You hopefully know as well as I do that a self-report poll like that would be very flawed as any kind of proof because of some of the very things we're discussing, so that's a pretty hollow threat to me.

Was my threat of invoking Gandalf also hollow? Was my threat to have you brought up on charges of conduct unbecoming a Starfleet officer also hollow? Because I think you're just reading everything I say in the most aggressive tone possible (e.g., "threat"), even when my words - such as asking you why you didn't get me anything for my birthday - suggest considerably more levity. Weird, huh?

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As a note, I never said belief in equality was entirely unable to be overridden.

Then your position that their belief in equality would not be overcome by their desire for self-appeasement and to reinforce their notion of themselves as good people seems problematic. Because now you're saying that's totally possible.

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They're happy with their inequality, but the majority of them still believe in some kind of equality, and think things are equal. This is why I call out "lack of perception". Look at the numbers for white people in this Gallup poll under "In general, do you think that blacks have as good a chance as white people in your community to get any kind of job for which they are qualified, or don't you think they have as good a chance?". Even in 1978 it was 67%: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1687/Race-Relations.aspx

As you pointed out, self-report is problematic. For instance, participants may have been affected by the social desirability bias. Or maybe they support inequality because they think blacks can get jobs and "take them" from whites. Saying that blacks can get jobs for which they're qualified doesn't tell you anything about their belief in equality. Just their belief in the ability of blacks to get jobs - and (as demonstrated) may not even tell you much about that. Of course, you can control for that. You can run practice tests with different wording and tests for prejudices and adherence to stereotypes. I'm just saying one data point doesn't do much for me without more data.

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EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, I believe Samsally posted it in the feminism thread. I get the two of us confused. She's a feminist artist from North Dakota and I'm a sexist man who interrupts conversations to tear down women. You can see the confusion.

Your action did not tear down women in the direct sense you probably mean it here, it got in the way of something that you say will work, however inefficiently (unless you've actually rescinded that, it's getting hard to tell again).

Nope. I'm still holding that your method of starting conversations is counterproductive and makes your work harder. The above was actually a(nother) joke, because you keep using the phrase "tear down" with regard to my behavior toward you.

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Okay (though I would say the racism workshop was actually helping people understand different perspectives, and that empathy was a possible but not necessary side effect of that understanding [though people who are trying to understand other people, and are thus more likely to be empathetic, are the ones that go to workshops, merely understanding someone's point of view doesn't ensure you empathize - you could understand it and not care]), but we're talking about cognitive dissonance.

I'd argue that you don't really understand if you can't empathize, but that's a needless semantical nitpick if I pressed it right now. Just putting this here for reference if it becomes relevant later.

I guess it depends on the level of understanding. I can, for instance, understand the effects of something intellectually, and even understand that it causes others great emotional pain, without it being an issue that I care about. Is it a total understanding? Not really. But there is understanding going on (in contrast to people who don't care enough to even find out how people may be effected).

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Do you think that being able to empathize with the harm actions someone currently considers good cause would NOT produce dissonance somehow? If so, I'm going to have to ask you to cite how this particular contradiction is exempt from dissonance theory.

I don't know, and I don't think you do either. I think you have an opinion, but I don't think you know. I think it's at least partially dependent on the individual and how well you did at convincing them that their actions create harm. Again, the typical response you seem to get is "you don't know what you're talking about," which may be a resolution of dissonance in and of itself, but definitely not in the way you want (discrediting you means they don't have to change either idea, as was noted in the article about teacher training).

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I have not disagreed that in the circumstances they practice those methods are generally better or that that may be all that is politically feasible.

Do you think the power dynamic has no effect on how open a client may be? How about HIPAA regulations? Certifications from reputable organizations?

Therapy, as roughly defined by a setting and having a psychologist or counselor guide someone's introspection, is probably the most contextually relevant analogy, I agree, but it is still a flawed analogy in the ways I have been describing.

You keep coming back to this idea that professionals don't antagonize people based on some concern for politics or funding. But, while large state-funded institutions certainly have to worry about politics, the field in general has often done things that are unpopular because they work. ECT, for instance, has a strong stigma attached, but it was done and is still done because it's often effective for cases of unremitting depression that aren't responsive to other treatments. Also, it's not really logical support for your argument. "Flooding" involves pushing people into situations where they're forced to confront phobias (such as spiders). It's unpleasant, and certainly not the type of therapy you would devise if you were worried about looking good. But it works, and patients (usually) come to appreciate it after they've learned to overcome their fears.

Now, regarding the power dynamic, I'm pretty sure I already addressed this (indeed, I'm the one that brought it up). It's possible to evaluate the relative effects of different variables statistically using multiple regression analysis, wherein changes in each variable are weighed against outcomes, giving us "beta weights" for each variable. A higher beta weight means it has more effect on outcomes than other variables. Client openness - as defined as a willingness to work within the therapeutic alliance - is the major factor. Thus I'm not sure your problems with the analogy are entirely fruitful.

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You have explicitly stated a couple times an insistence on keeping the discussion to psychology only though. Since you apparently are not bothered by that anymore, I will drop it.

I have not done this.

It was when you were trying to avoid the morality discussion we're having by not wanting to talk about sexism/what is being measured. I've already searched up two things I recalled enough of the wording of, but I don't recall enough of the wording for a specific statement about this to find it readily, and we're already doing the discussion now anyway.

No. What I said was that I wanted to keep the discussion on your method, and avoid adding a new topic (my sexism, my understanding of feminism, etc) that I felt would muddle the conversation that was already happening.

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You said, "They're also usually dealing with things far more on the surface than I am." If you didn't intend that to mean that they only deal with surface-level issues, then what did you intend for it to mean?

Should we just generally move towards unit-based adjectives? Lets say 1-15 is surface and 100 is deepest. They're dealing more with 30 or 40 because the people are presenting with problems such as in your workshop video or know something they are doing needs fixing but they're not really sure what and are generally not dealing with the more radical changes required to end sexism like the end of the gender binary. I am dealing more with 70 or 80 because I am dealing with people who do not conceive of it as a problem consciously and am working on those much more basic concepts. These units are arbitrary, but hopefully you get the idea.

Being unit-based isn't going to help, because you get to define the units and arbitrarily assign them (for instance, we went from "more on the surface" to "twice as many depth units" - that's a pretty significant change). I could just say, "I think they're trying to delve to the same number of units as you are," and we're in the same position. There's no reason to believe, yet, that you're doing anything they aren't.

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Many cognitive biases are difficult if not impossible to change, and we are actually wired to believe them. That's not the same as saying they can't be changed, because like the bias blind spot, awareness of the introspection illusion can cause people to recognize their own biases. However, this effect is often fleeting, and people will still tend to rely on biased thinking (of any kind) unless they're specifically aware of it. For instance, I've been trying to train myself not to fall prey to the fundamental attribution error for about a decade. Whenever I catch myself making an error of attribution I remind myself of it and review why it's biased. So, now I'm in the habit of catching myself making the errors... but I still make them, and I have no way of knowing how often I make them but don't catch them (re:availability heuristic).

Exactly. I have said something similar before already too. Glad we got to the same page on that. One thing down!

You made it sound as though you actually thought you could rid people of things like the introspection illusion. Is that not your position?

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I've already told you how I do it. I talk them through it, without doing anything to add insult to injury (that is, minimizing the emotional arousal). People recognize that you can be a good person and still do a bad thing. The important thing is a willingness to recognize their behavior and work on it - the essence of character. Hence, while it may be insulting in the sense of hurtful, it's not insulting in the sense of belittling.

How do you walk someone through something like "You do not understand how women fear for their safety at parties and currently cannot perceive it and you never will be able to do so fully" without any "belitting" as you define it?

This is easy. You just do everything you do now, without making harsh judgments about the person you're speaking with (or at least not expressing them). Make your points about specific things - specific behavior, specific thoughts - and not about them as a person. If you prefer this analogy, think of yourself as a teacher. How do teachers expose students to new concepts they've never experienced before and help them to understand? Through patience or by insults? What do we find when students get frustrated? They act out and fail to absorb the material.

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To convince me of that you're going to have to negate some significant portion of my knowledge, so I was giving you a potential more focused area with which to do just that. It seems like we end up agreeing way too much for that to be a likely thing to happen though. That statement was for your benefit to potentially make it easier for you to tear my argument down. You don't HAVE to do it, it was just a suggestion for a possible weak point. If you can change my mind I want you to do it. Then, not only do I get the joy of learning something new, I supposedly become even righter than before.

If your mind hasn't been changed by now, I dare say it isn't because of a lack of evidence. You're simply resistant to this particular change. Me citing yet another thing is unlikely to be the straw that breaks the back of your resistance. Plus, I'll decide what I want to argue.

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This is made very difficult by the fact that I am/was a difficult time figuring out what you're differing with me on other than "Kylra is wrong" and that you are the one asking me to explain my theory. Point out what differs and I will try to elaborate, but otherwise I do not really have any place to go but a ground floor on up lecture or starting in random spots or somesuch. If I were interrogating your theory (which I have in a few places), I would provide where I think we differ for you to counter or elaborate on. I generally only want to put in the effort to dig up cites if there's a dispute, it seems like a critical difference in understanding, or I don't think the person I am talking to would understand from just a summary. I could in theory cite a hundred articles/studies, write a textbook for you and spend hundreds of hours making sure it is copy-edited perfectly right from the start, but this is an internet forum for Sinfest, not a complete associate's degree program in "How to Feminism" as Adyon greatly put it.

You don't know where we differ? Then how has this conversation grown so long, and how have you made so many specific arguments in support of your position? We differ on your use of insults as a tool, that you claim are necessary, and I claim are counterproductive. I'm sure I've said this at least a dozen times.

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Right. Now kindly show me that 1) you know how to make thoughts dissonant, and 2) that you can control for the various typical responses to dissonance. I'm not at all convinced that telling people they support sexism is, in itself, dissonant. I could be wrong, and I'm less concerned with the first point than the second - that you have any way of controlling how they respond. Especially since the typical response I've observed has been, "you don't know what you're talking about."

You seen me agree with the same theory behind this you cite here, so "do I know how" should probably not be the question to ask. The real question along that line is "do I have the ability" unless you're going to disagree with the things you cite. That you're going to find little to no empirical evidence collected for you to peruse. I could post some minor probable examples of evidence of this from the forums, but I can only guess from the things posted so far based on previous patterns. In theory though the answer to that is also "yes, everyone can and does all the time and usually without meaning to" but individually on a lesser scale than things like "the advertising industry" or "major political party's propaganda machine".

This is not persuasive. I agree with the idea of an internal combustion engine, but that doesn't mean I know how it works. I know that you agree that cognitive dissonance can happen, but I don't believe you know how to create it in other people reliably, or that you know how to ensure the result is favorable (which is kind of a big deal).

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Telling people they support sexism does not necessarily provoke dissonance. It is just one thing that possibly can depending on the person's beliefs and patterns of thought. You need at least two cognitions to have dissonance, not one, so saying "telling people they support sexism is not, in itself, dissonant" is almost tautologically true in nature. The second cognition in this case is one provided by the listener/reader themselves. It is potentially given longer term force by activating another internal cognition dissonant with the first internal cognition. If you don't recognize that two active cognitions are required to produce dissonance (which it seems you may not from the way you're wording this), we should seek to establish that one way or the other first before continuing. In fact, if you disagree with it taking at least two active cognitions that contradict, we probably need to stop everything else until that is sorted out.

Well, you could refer back to our discussion of cognitive dissonance and my repeated statements about how ideas conflict, my reference to the classic paper on dissonance and what made it work, etc.

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Moderate feminists get told the same stuff I get told all the time too. See Ashland for one fairly typical example. I expect people to call me "too emotional", "overreacting", "man-hater", "don't know what I'm talking about" and so on regardless of how nice/mean I am. You're an exception in this regard for the bit I am after you about because you haven't very many of the typical responses to even nicely worded feminism that contradict people's viewpoints. You are still going to have to come up with something better than "people try to dismiss or get mad at you" to convince me of anything because that is a terrible metric (see that paper regarding training teachers as well). The argument about getting the right kind of "hurt" to use your word in your post is plausibly a useful discussion, but making people's initial negative response a measurement is just not going to work, especially when we're talking about people who do not acknowledge there is a problem with their actions.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. You're either right or you're wrong. If you're right, you're right in spite of what people tell you. If you're wrong, you're wrong regardless of whether me telling you you're wrong sounds like something people tells feminists. The reason I don't argue like the people you're used to arguing with is because I have a single point that I'm trying to make which is removed from the issues of ideology. My position works regardless of what you're arguing, any time you want to increase the chances of someone listening to what you're saying. As such, I have no need of ideological arguments, because I'm not arguing an ideology. I'm arguing a method.

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Theoryside, people who exhibit temporally immediate hedonistic apathy towards oppression already have no motivation to do other than what they do now. If that wins out, they're still immediately hedonistically apathetic, and being outside the status quo nets immediate to near immediate social punishments, which will generally keep them from making the status quo worse.

This depends on a rigidly defined notion of what is the status quo. If your hedonistic apathetic person has a group of hedonistic apathetic friends there are likely to be no social consequences for remaining so.

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People who are ostensibly for ending the oppression of women but "don't really get it" have "end the oppression of women" as a part of their self-identity, as well as their "good person" self-identity which usually runs very deep, so that is also unlikely to be the thing that gives out compared to some specific category of action. There's several different general branches of this I can go through that each have various twists, such as "funfeminists", biotruthers, and the Mansplaining Male Feminist. Most of the differences that direction are more of "how to approach" manuals than the theory behind this though, but if you think it would be useful for you to understand what I am saying, I can elaborate on one or two.

Being that cognitive dissonance is often resolved subconsciously, it would seem like "how to get them to believe dissonant ideas" is strongly related to "how to ensure the result is favorable." If your approach is flawed, and their solution is subconscious, you're simply reinforcing the belief you're trying to change. I refer once more to the links about threats making people resistant to change, priming with extreme exemplars leading people to contrast rather than compare, and people taking even more extreme views in opposition to someone who insults them. These are the sorts of situations you would want to avoid when instilling dissonance, in order to avoid unfavorable consequences.

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I am not priming "feminism" per se, but a trait of perception that people are not accomplishing,

You can't possibly control this. For one thing, merely saying the word "feminism" primes it. Talking about equality for women primes it. Talking about women in general may prime it for some people. Through spreading activation, tons of things become activated. You can't control what is and isn't primed. It's unconscious (we can only observe the effects of priming). So I'm fairly certain you're priming feminism, as well as any associated concepts, schemata, scripts, and models.

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as well as myself as a person-exemplar. For an example in porn which started this, the objectification of women and it's negative effects on real women. As far as for priming by itself goes, the "feminism" discussion is "filler" to retain engagement, although it's still useful for other purposes not related to priming such as rote teaching the audience if not the listener. Priming need not be done in the clinically eliminative way as done in research as when it is used in "the field" so to speak, and defining it only as it is done in research is extremely narrow for something that is in concept done just about any time you say or do anything in the presence anyone that they can hear/read/see/etc. Even pictures sitting around can prime things, they just aren't very useful for research because of how complicated they are in symbol quantity and interaction.

I'm not sure what the point of this diatribe is, exactly? Everything we know about priming is because of "the clinically eliminative way it is done in research." The reason we know that virtually everything has priming effects is because that was discovered via research. So I'm not sure exactly what your problem with the research is.

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From the first study there is one thing I want to note that is very relevant to theory for my side of this argument:

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Importantly, there was nothing in our data to suggest that no-goal participants had formed an impression before receiving the instructions to report one. This difference between impression-goal and no-goal conditons is critical to our hypothesis, because it suggests that the "default" (represented in the present study by the no-goal condition) is to abstain from forming an impression until given instructions to do so.

Although the study is related to other persons, it would suggest the potential for a similar default and manner of activation regarding the self, even if that is complicated by other factors. Getting people to form impressions of their harmful actions as it relates to women is a big part of the goal here.

Why would a person have no impressions of themself? Everyone has a self-identity, which is a built-in impression that resists change. Getting them to form impressions of their behavior contrary to their self-identity is the basis of your argument that you use cognitive dissonance.

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Regarding the second study the contrasting effect is desirable. People already have self-judgements of being not-sexist or how terrible feminists are, and providing myself as an exemplar will slide at least one of those how I want for person-judgements. This is part of the concept behind the Overton Window, where public opinion ranges from, essentially, accepted without question to unthinkable on either side of an issue. Not that I am deliberately saying things I do not think are true or I consider morally wrong though. It just happens that feminism is largely in the "radical" or "unthinkable" categories for the vast majority of people. Even moderate feminism is barely inside if it isn't outside of the window of "acceptable". See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring

This doesn't make any sense. The point of the second study was that if you set yourself up as an exemplar for the people you talk with, and through your actions come to be viewed as extreme, they will look for ways to avoid assimilating the information you give them, and instead find the ways in which they aren't like you or your descriptions - which is pretty much what I've observed people doing when you start getting aggressive. They just shut down and say, "I'm not like that at all," and give you some story about how nice they are to women.

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For the trait-priming regarding perceptiveness with regards to harm to women and empathizing, those are shown to always be assimilated and will in theory also affect future judgements of those how I want.

... based on what?

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Regarding "pissing people off" I will not be persuaded until you can explain how to get the information I want to get across to people to them without pissing people off. Keep in mind the ethical content is part of the information.

You mean that method I've described for you at least twice in detail? Once in relation to smashing lamps, in my very last response?

There is general consensus that a person who believes one way but acts another way will only experience dissonance only if he or she believes the action was freely chosen.

While according to the study that mostly only applies to only to people with a higher measured Preference for Consistency, this and preference for consistency is possibly something interesting to note for this discussion.

Okay. In what way do you think it's interesting for this discussion? It seems weird to just dangle it out there with no explanation.

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And again that is generally when both parties agree to it and so on, which is circumstantially very different from the Official Sinfest Internet Forums and its included posters. I am also really starting to get the impression you don't fully understand what I am saying with the qualia analogy and why, nor why I actually think people are that naive aside from just a subjective "my feelings". We might be getting there in other segments though.

Actually, we already covered what happens in therapy when both parties don't agree... twice I think? It was one of the reasons I like the analogy - it works just like real discussion, where progress is only made when both parties are engaged. If one side isn't, then progress is stalled._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

Your characterization of how I started this conversation seems pretty central to our disagreement, since you're calling it sexist. You can't call my behavior sexist, but then call me trying to get the facts about that behavior correct a "mere technicality." That you were aware of my education is irrelevant, because you depicted my initial posts (or posts) as both more aggressive and condescending than it really was, and implied that I attempted to hold my education over you from the beginning. I find this dishonest, and I think dishonesty is important to point out.

There are, or at least were, quite a few other people reading this thread. If it was just you and me in private messages, it would have been a poor technicality for me to bring up like that.

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Anyway, it's rational to address behavior when you see it - it's how teachers and coaches train students, how friends correct annoying behavior in friends, how parents teach kids, and even how owners train dogs. Timing is important for pinpointing which behavior should change, and waiting can mean losing focus (or not remembering the behavior in question). However, the educational imperative is thus in conflict with the anti-sexism imperative (the best teaching moment, in this case, is not the best feminism moment). I'll keep it in mind, but we should also recognize that there will often be competing motivations, and two good things may compete against one another for time. You have to pick which one is better serviced by acting or not acting, and in this case I decided that acting was of better service than not acting.

Cool. That's about all I was aiming to get out of that part of the discussion. I wonder though, were you worried I wouldn't be around long enough to have the conversation about this if you had waited?

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In addition, the conversation about sexism seemed (and still seems) to have a great many people on your side fighting the good fight. Thus, while you may think you're the best person to champion the cause, I had (and have) no reason to believe that, and thus had (and have) no reason to believe that distracting you will cause any appreciable difference in the outcome of these conversations. By contrast, when I brought up the issue of method, no one was discussing it (someone eventually would in another thread, though). That made it a more salient topic in that moment, to me.

I don't think I'm "the best champion", only good enough to try my utmost however flawed that effort may end up. I can always get better. To think otherwise would be making myself worse in many areas.

Did you have a reason to believe that I would not be able to accomplish anything? You keep flipping back and forth on whether I am less effective or ineffective. If I am merely less effective as I believe was your last position on this front, then you would have reason to believe that distracting me would cause an appreciable difference. Also, it's not me being distracted that is potentially the problem, it's the people I am talking with. If it were just over me, I can just ignore you if need be and the problem would be solved.

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What I was trying to do was show that your position has no evidentiary support - that it's just your opinion that it works, and that generally speaking both the science and other activists disagree with you.

Still not convinced my position has no evidence support as far as I am concerned, but we're working on that in other segments.

The "insults" I use (or try to stick to using) are always related to what I was trying to persuade about though, and I'm guessing that was not the nature of the "insults" in that study (I don't have access to it, but I'm debating whether it will be worth getting).

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Now, after trying several different tactics and having those shot down, you're talking about cognitive dissonance, but not showing you can control how it effects people (or, really, that you understand how it works); and priming, but have not shown that you understand how that works, either. So, it seems natural that you don't like the fact that I'm pushing for empirical evidence. You could never lose an argument if we abandoned the search for evidence, because then it would just be my opinion against yours. You have the unfortunate position here of being clearly wrong, and like you admonished me above, struggling to hold to your position rather than simply admitting it.

You have not yet convinced me I am clearly wrong. You have helped refine a few things on the side, but so far that's it.

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No, you haven't complained about my tone. You've just misinterpreted it at your convenience. When we're talking "in the moment" (as it were, with walls of text) we seem to discussing rather cordially. When you describe my arguments later, though, you depict them as harsh and rude. Now, I may not be fit for tea time, but I'm not rude. So depicting me as such is a misinterpretation of my tone. Which is either concerning, if you actually think I'm intending to be rude when I'm not (I have no interest in insulting you, because it would be contrary to my goal of informing you), or dishonest, if you're "flavoring" my arguments to make them seem worse than they are.

I wouldn't call our discussion entirely cordial. Not that you're "rude" per se, but you do seem to occasionally use the same spikes you accuse me of being wrong for using from my perspective.

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No, smashing the lamp was an example of a bad thing (I thought that was obvious) the emotional impact of which was moderated by the intent of the person who broke it. When someone hurts you accidentally, an honest accident, such as breaking your lamp through thoughtlessness, it's less emotionally hurtful than if someone is, for instance, terrorizing you in your home and uses the lamp as an effigy of literally breaking you. Hence, intent is important, even if it doesn't resolve one of responsibility or ameliorate all suffering. End of point.

That it's less emotionally hurtful if it's unintentional isn't strictly a given. For instance, that can make it harder to blame the person who did it for many people and leave them in a state where they don't have a clear answer for assigning the cause of their loss and causing them more distress relative to if they could cleanly blame the responsible party.

The action of terrorizing + breaking a lamp is a different action than just breaking a lamp. A more accurate comparison is someone who accidentally breaks the lamp, and someone who comes over specifically to break the lamp and doesn't say or imply anything about that intent.

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If they don't care about breaking lamps, then their intent is one of indifference to the problems they cause for others. That's bad. If they don't realize they're breaking lamps then their intent may be good (that's actually a description of a lack of intent, so all I can say is that it's not obviously bad). But that's where your analogy falls apart. If they can't even tell they're breaking lamps (tiny microscopic lamps!), then you would approach them in a non-confrontational way, ask them to listen to you before they react, tell them that you understand their intent was not to harm (and possibly they had no way to know they were even doing harm), show them the evidence of the harm they've caused, and then reiterate that you believe their intent was good and that there are ways to express their good intent that harm no one. Minimizes emotional harm to the person receiving criticism, which helps maximize the positive connection between critic and recipient, and thus increases the likelihood of internalizing the criticism because it doesn't cause a conflict that must first be resolved. Textbook counseling for everything from marriage counseling to school counseling to management training to customer service. Layer the bad between layers of good (open positive and end positive) and it goes down easier.

In this case it's more like their intent was self-serving rather than "good" in the sense we've been discussing, since the discussion sparking this was talking about porn. To focus the analogy, lets say they magically got a dollar for every lamp the unintentionally broke and never took the time to analyze why they were getting dollars for no reason, and this has been happening for 13 years since the age of about 12. They just knew if they went certain places dollars magically appeared in their wallets. You go up to them and say they are breaking lamps and say how that is a bad thing, then a typical response you get from people like that is "how can it be a bad thing since I am getting so many dollars?"

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This seems like dissembling. You try to correct me and then call it "needlessly semantical" to forestall me from replying. If the semantic argument was "needless" then why did you need to correct me here?

I meant what I was saying there was needlessly semantical, but I still needed to put in a reason why I was using it how I was that was different from your use for your reference. I should have been more clear. My mistake.

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All of this seems dishonest. You have brought up - repeatedly - that you don't use and that you disapprove of language that disparages people by comparing them to children or the disabled. In what way is that a false paraphrasing of your beliefs? That you can rationalize contradicting your beliefs, as with the qualia analogy, doesn't make it any less a contradiction. I find it ironic that, after demonstrating a disconnect between what you say and how you act, that you're trying to turn this around and say I'm doing something wrong. For all your talk of how I should accept when I do something wrong, you don't seem to be following your own advice. You know what they call people who do that, right?

I'll refer back to "it's less net ableist". In this case as far as anti-ableist. I have accepted that I am doing something wrong as a part of that utility-maximized action, but I have yet to find a way to do less wrong than that to make the action calculate to be more right. If you can provide a way to do less wrong than with that analogy, I would be very willing to hear it.

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If you didn't intend to make people angry by calling them child-like, blind, and disgusting, then why did you spend the entire discussion arguing that their anger was your intent and was necessary to get through to them?

I think we lost some nuance somewhere. I vaguely remember conceding to you that "Sure, if you want to put it that way I am intending to make people angry now lets move on" after I said several times that anger is the typical result, but my intent is not anger per se. This is probably going to loop back to "show that I can do what I want to accomplish without insulting people as you define it". Calling people out on their bigotry as if it were a bad thing is something just about everyone gets insulted/offended/angered by to some degree.

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What I'm saying is that it's insulting when you belittle people, or when you disparage them. It's the specific intent you convey to people that implies that they are weak, incapable, or deplorable. These are judgments that are unnecessary when telling someone why they're wrong, and which only serve to frustrate and anger the people you're trying to get to understand you.

Are you talking factually wrong or morally/ethically wrong here? If it's the former, that is relatively easy to do without "insults" as we have been using here. For morally/ethically wrong, not so much.

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Spite can be anything, and to any degree, as long as the motivation is to hurt, annoy, or offend you. The point of this vein of conversation was that you seem to think you can 1) implant subconscious suggestions that people will recall later, despite any impressions they have of you, or any notions that are recalled/primed in response to the way you treat them and the way they feel about you as a result. 2)Then, these subconscious ideas you implant will work on them to get them to agree with you, even though your behavior is more likely to prime them to contrast themselves with the example that you're setting - that is, 3)to actively try and distance themselves from you and feminism. Is that your position?

1) I don't mean a conscious recalling if you're implying that.

2) The ideas will work to get them to agree with themselves. Again, I don't bother with this kind of effort if people don't actually think oppressing women is wrong on some level. Changing that kind of thinking through lengthy and/or logical discussion with arbitrarily chosen people is generally beyond my power on a direct and individual scale.

3) I generally don't put too much stock in who labels themselves a feminist or not.

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Was my threat of invoking Gandalf also hollow? Was my threat to have you brought up on charges of conduct unbecoming a Starfleet officer also hollow? Because I think you're just reading everything I say in the most aggressive tone possible (e.g., "threat"), even when my words - such as asking you why you didn't get me anything for my birthday - suggest considerably more levity. Weird, huh?

Not everything. Also, inappropriate "levity" is a fairly common tactic to derail or otherwise degrade feminist discussions. Sometimes unintentional. I don't think it really had any effect here since you're still taking it seriously otherwise though. Which ironically is probably why I took it seriously, because we're being pretty serious!

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As you pointed out, self-report is problematic. For instance, participants may have been affected by the social desirability bias. Or maybe they support inequality because they think blacks can get jobs and "take them" from whites. Saying that blacks can get jobs for which they're qualified doesn't tell you anything about their belief in equality. Just their belief in the ability of blacks to get jobs - and (as demonstrated) may not even tell you much about that. Of course, you can control for that. You can run practice tests with different wording and tests for prejudices and adherence to stereotypes. I'm just saying one data point doesn't do much for me without more data.

If people say they believe in equality and also see black people having equal job opportunity to white people, they both believe in equality and have flawed perception. What that poll says is that a lot of people have flawed perception. If you would permit me to make a guess, I would say a common resolution of the dissonance of white people between their belief in equality and seeing black people facing inequality that white people benefit from warps their perception so that they perceive black people as treated equally.

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Nope. I'm still holding that your method of starting conversations is counterproductive and makes your work harder. The above was actually a(nother) joke, because you keep using the phrase "tear down" with regard to my behavior toward you.

Accidental Lamp Breaker still broke lamps is what I am getting at.

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I guess it depends on the level of understanding. I can, for instance, understand the effects of something intellectually, and even understand that it causes others great emotional pain, without it being an issue that I care about. Is it a total understanding? Not really. But there is understanding going on (in contrast to people who don't care enough to even find out how people may be effected).

Neither of the kinds of understanding you define here really count as a real understanding for the type of social issues we're talking about. The latter case is "better" in that you need that kind of knowledge to reach a real understanding of some sort, but it's still not really "there" yet.

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Do you think that being able to empathize with the harm actions someone currently considers good cause would NOT produce dissonance somehow? If so, I'm going to have to ask you to cite how this particular contradiction is exempt from dissonance theory.

I don't know, and I don't think you do either. I think you have an opinion, but I don't think you know. I think it's at least partially dependent on the individual and how well you did at convincing them that their actions create harm. Again, the typical response you seem to get is "you don't know what you're talking about," which may be a resolution of dissonance in and of itself, but definitely not in the way you want (discrediting you means they don't have to change either idea, as was noted in the article about teacher training).

Discrediting me doesn't resolve their sense of empathy. Discrediting is a possible way to avoid the dissonance though, yes, assuming they actually believe it deeply enough. Without some mechanism used to either resolve it or hide it fully, it will be dissonant though.

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You keep coming back to this idea that professionals don't antagonize people based on some concern for politics or funding. But, while large state-funded institutions certainly have to worry about politics, the field in general has often done things that are unpopular because they work. ECT, for instance, has a strong stigma attached, but it was done and is still done because it's often effective for cases of unremitting depression that aren't responsive to other treatments. Also, it's not really logical support for your argument. "Flooding" involves pushing people into situations where they're forced to confront phobias (such as spiders). It's unpleasant, and certainly not the type of therapy you would devise if you were worried about looking good. But it works, and patients (usually) come to appreciate it after they've learned to overcome their fears.

Bigotry is not considered a mental illness that causes the patient themselves distress and legally or conceptually disabled levels functioning in life, so the analogy to ECT and Flooding in this manner doesn't really work.

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Now, regarding the power dynamic, I'm pretty sure I already addressed this (indeed, I'm the one that brought it up). It's possible to evaluate the relative effects of different variables statistically using multiple regression analysis, wherein changes in each variable are weighed against outcomes, giving us "beta weights" for each variable. A higher beta weight means it has more effect on outcomes than other variables. Client openness - as defined as a willingness to work within the therapeutic alliance - is the major factor. Thus I'm not sure your problems with the analogy are entirely fruitful.

What if you can't practically establish a proper therapeutic alliance as is the case here?

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Being unit-based isn't going to help, because you get to define the units and arbitrarily assign them (for instance, we went from "more on the surface" to "twice as many depth units" - that's a pretty significant change). I could just say, "I think they're trying to delve to the same number of units as you are," and we're in the same position. There's no reason to believe, yet, that you're doing anything they aren't.

Let's pick on that workshop video from before again. They are not really addressing that white man's feeling of entitlement to misaddressing people's race without consequence. They're putting his problems with being called out for saying the wrong race on an equal level to the racism issues faced by racial minorities.

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You made it sound as though you actually thought you could rid people of things like the introspection illusion. Is that not your position?

Not entirely no. Just pieces of it.

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This is easy. You just do everything you do now, without making harsh judgments about the person you're speaking with (or at least not expressing them). Make your points about specific things - specific behavior, specific thoughts - and not about them as a person. If you prefer this analogy, think of yourself as a teacher. How do teachers expose students to new concepts they've never experienced before and help them to understand? Through patience or by insults? What do we find when students get frustrated? They act out and fail to absorb the material.

This is usually how I try to start out. It just often very quickly gets to denial, them being morally/ethically wrong, or them thinking it's a judgement of them rather than their action anyway.

The teacher analogy would work better here if we were only dealing in facts.

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You don't know where we differ? Then how has this conversation grown so long, and how have you made so many specific arguments in support of your position? We differ on your use of insults as a tool, that you claim are necessary, and I claim are counterproductive. I'm sure I've said this at least a dozen times.

I know that much. What I don't know is what exactly is at the root of why we differ on those things, and only sometimes do I have leads.

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This is not persuasive. I agree with the idea of an internal combustion engine, but that doesn't mean I know how it works. I know that you agree that cognitive dissonance can happen, but I don't believe you know how to create it in other people reliably, or that you know how to ensure the result is favorable (which is kind of a big deal).

Creating it reliably is fairly easy, but getting it to stick more than a few moments is harder and really depends on the person and how much effort and time I want to put in. We're dealing with the favorability criteria in other segments.

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Well, you could refer back to our discussion of cognitive dissonance and my repeated statements about how ideas conflict, my reference to the classic paper on dissonance and what made it work, etc.

If you're saying a single cognition by itself alone can create dissonance, I have no idea how you came to that conclusion after reading that and other things on the topic. What is a single cognition supposed to be dissonant with?

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I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. You're either right or you're wrong. If you're right, you're right in spite of what people tell you. If you're wrong, you're wrong regardless of whether me telling you you're wrong sounds like something people tells feminists. The reason I don't argue like the people you're used to arguing with is because I have a single point that I'm trying to make which is removed from the issues of ideology. My position works regardless of what you're arguing, any time you want to increase the chances of someone listening to what you're saying. As such, I have no need of ideological arguments, because I'm not arguing an ideology. I'm arguing a method.

The bolded is the point I was making there in response to you.

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Then your position that their belief in equality would not be overcome by their desire for self-appeasement and to reinforce their notion of themselves as good people seems problematic. Because now you're saying that's totally possible.

This depends on a rigidly defined notion of what is the status quo. If your hedonistic apathetic person has a group of hedonistic apathetic friends there are likely to be no social consequences for remaining so.

Status quo doesn't require a rigid definition, as for my intents and purposes going to nearly always be an issue largely of moral principle. So general worst case for apathetic hedonists is they remain in the status quo and continue considering themselves as good people as they did before keeping their same moral principles because that is the most pleasurable for them immediately, and thus generally the same motivation framework for action.

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Being that cognitive dissonance is often resolved subconsciously, it would seem like "how to get them to believe dissonant ideas" is strongly related to "how to ensure the result is favorable." If your approach is flawed, and their solution is subconscious, you're simply reinforcing the belief you're trying to change. I refer once more to the links about threats making people resistant to change, priming with extreme exemplars leading people to contrast rather than compare, and people taking even more extreme views in opposition to someone who insults them. These are the sorts of situations you would want to avoid when instilling dissonance, in order to avoid unfavorable consequences.

The bolded is a premise I do not (yet at least) agree with, but I think we're going over some of the evidence for that in the next segments. The implication relationship is not obviously logically true either as another logical result of their subconscious solution is possibly in my favor.

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You can't possibly control this. For one thing, merely saying the word "feminism" primes it. Talking about equality for women primes it. Talking about women in general may prime it for some people. Through spreading activation, tons of things become activated. You can't control what is and isn't primed. It's unconscious (we can only observe the effects of priming). So I'm fairly certain you're priming feminism, as well as any associated concepts, schemata, scripts, and models.

I'm aiming for activation of a certain pattern of thought that involves emotions that people are not using, specifically centering around empathy. Per that study and other things presented it's known I can, in theory, do this. Show that the other things will get in the way.

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as well as myself as a person-exemplar. For an example in porn which started this, the objectification of women and it's negative effects on real women. As far as for priming by itself goes, the "feminism" discussion is "filler" to retain engagement, although it's still useful for other purposes not related to priming such as rote teaching the audience if not the listener. Priming need not be done in the clinically eliminative way as done in research as when it is used in "the field" so to speak, and defining it only as it is done in research is extremely narrow for something that is in concept done just about any time you say or do anything in the presence anyone that they can hear/read/see/etc. Even pictures sitting around can prime things, they just aren't very useful for research because of how complicated they are in symbol quantity and interaction.

I'm not sure what the point of this diatribe is, exactly? Everything we know about priming is because of "the clinically eliminative way it is done in research." The reason we know that virtually everything has priming effects is because that was discovered via research. So I'm not sure exactly what your problem with the research is.

I don't disagree with the research. You're actually agreeing with me and restating what I said here as far as I can tell.

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From the first study there is one thing I want to note that is very relevant to theory for my side of this argument:

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Importantly, there was nothing in our data to suggest that no-goal participants had formed an impression before receiving the instructions to report one. This difference between impression-goal and no-goal conditons is critical to our hypothesis, because it suggests that the "default" (represented in the present study by the no-goal condition) is to abstain from forming an impression until given instructions to do so.

Although the study is related to other persons, it would suggest the potential for a similar default and manner of activation regarding the self, even if that is complicated by other factors. Getting people to form impressions of their harmful actions as it relates to women is a big part of the goal here.

Why would a person have no impressions of themself? Everyone has a self-identity, which is a built-in impression that resists change. Getting them to form impressions of their behavior contrary to their self-identity is the basis of your argument that you use cognitive dissonance.

They might have no impression of themselves as it relates to X, where X is some harmful action.

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This doesn't make any sense. The point of the second study was that if you set yourself up as an exemplar for the people you talk with, and through your actions come to be viewed as extreme, they will look for ways to avoid assimilating the information you give them, and instead find the ways in which they aren't like you or your descriptions - which is pretty much what I've observed people doing when you start getting aggressive. They just shut down and say, "I'm not like that at all," and give you some story about how nice they are to women.

Maybe you should read the study you posted a little closer. If they do view me as an extreme person-exemplar for feminism, that means they will view all current and future feminists as "less extreme" or more acceptable. Net gain.

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For the trait-priming regarding perceptiveness with regards to harm to women and empathizing, those are shown to always be assimilated and will in theory also affect future judgements of those how I want.

... based on what?

That study you posted. It says only person-exemplars produce contrasting comparisons with other persons in a similar "category" and that this does not carry over into traits.

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Regarding "pissing people off" I will not be persuaded until you can explain how to get the information I want to get across to people to them without pissing people off. Keep in mind the ethical content is part of the information.

You mean that method I've described for you at least twice in detail? Once in relation to smashing lamps, in my very last response?

We're getting there on the analogy. Maybe in another few posts the analogy will be acceptable to both of us to use at this rate.

There is general consensus that a person who believes one way but acts another way will only experience dissonance only if he or she believes the action was freely chosen.

While according to the study that mostly only applies to only to people with a higher measured Preference for Consistency, this and preference for consistency is possibly something interesting to note for this discussion.

Okay. In what way do you think it's interesting for this discussion? It seems weird to just dangle it out there with no explanation.

It means that you have to convince people they in some way chose to do an action not just say they did a particular action, and preference for consistency is a possible pattern to pick up in people for determining how/if they are worth your time. It's not technically a point in our discussion, but I found it interesting in a related manner.

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And again that is generally when both parties agree to it and so on, which is circumstantially very different from the Official Sinfest Internet Forums and its included posters. I am also really starting to get the impression you don't fully understand what I am saying with the qualia analogy and why, nor why I actually think people are that naive aside from just a subjective "my feelings". We might be getting there in other segments though.

Actually, we already covered what happens in therapy when both parties don't agree... twice I think? It was one of the reasons I like the analogy - it works just like real discussion, where progress is only made when both parties are engaged. If one side isn't, then progress is stalled.

Yeah we did. I think we got to something like "therapy won't happen if there's no engagement". I'm not sure I'd really call people posting with me to necessarily have "agreed" to have the conversation in the same sense as a therapy session despite there being some form of engagement, and perhaps the semantics are a sticking point here.